- author, Mark Waddington
- role, BBC News
When small business owner Lewis Kemp needed to get to London to meet a client, the train seemed like the best option.
But when the 32-year-old saw the price of a peak-hour return journey from Manchester on June 19, he began to wonder if it might be cheaper to take clients on holiday instead.
Shocked by the round-trip cost of £339.48, he posted his disbelief on social media.
He never expected that his post would inspire over 50,000 people, or that so many others who were just as frustrated with the state of rail travel in the UK would share his frustrations.
So, with a general election looming, can commuters hold out hope that the situation may change in their favour in the coming years?
Kemp, who runs the digital advertising agency Lightbulb Media, said the prices were shocking.
“If you go to London to give a presentation and have to bring three members of staff with you to do it, it’s going to cost you over £300 each,” he said.
“That’s about $1,000 or so for a job offer that you probably won’t get.”
Some who responded to his post suggested it might be cheaper to buy a return economy ticket to New York, while others said travelling to Europe was an entirely different experience, with a similar distance possible in places like Hungary for just £7.
One person said commuters were “paying five-star prices for one-star service”.
Rail operators say there are several ways commuters can save money.
Avanti, which operates the west coast mainline route which Kemp would have used, said it had “super fare” tickets available which cost £20.
Kemp noted that the ticket he chose was an “Anytime” fare, which allows customers to board any train at any time and can be purchased just before traveling.
The spokesman said most customers were taking advantage of “our low-cost Advance fares” and that on peak services one-way fares between Manchester and London could be found “from just £32”.
“We want to help people find the best value ticket for their needs,” they said.
Some passengers responded to Kemp’s post saying there was no need for passengers to “game the system” by planning far in advance or traveling at inconvenient times to get cheaper fares.
In 2011, Sir Roy McNulty’s report An expert on railroad cost-effectiveness and the West Coast franchise process warned that pricing is “highly complicated.”
Ten years later, the Ministry of Transport British Railways Plans He stressed that railways are “too fragmented, too complex and too expensive to run”.
The plan’s architects, then transport secretary Grant Shapps and former Royal Mail chairman Keith Williams, said in 2023 that the COVID-19 pandemic was also having a major impact on the rail sector and passenger numbers.
But for many businesspeople like Kemp, the need for affordable travel remains.
“There’s no incentive to stay and do business in the country,” he said.
“It was cheaper than traveling to see clients in London and I could travel to see clients in Spain once a week.”
The Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats have all outlined plans for rail in their general election manifestos.
They talk about “simpler tickets” and an “affordable” system, but make no explicit mention of lowering or capping fares in their pledges.
“We will increase train frequency, increase capacity and improve journey times,” the Conservatives said.
Labour said that if elected it would “completely reform Britain’s railways” and “put passengers at the heart of the service by reforming and nationalising the railway”.
The Liberal Democrats will ensure rail travel is a “genuinely convenient, affordable and environmentally friendly” option, and will “put commuters first; [hold] Accounting for companies [bring] “We will completely reform our broken fare system.”
Michael Solomon Williams, from the Campaign for Better Transport, said the lack of clarity was not necessarily a cause for concern.
He said progress could be made because both the Conservative and Labour parties have pledged to undertake some reforms through their British Rail Plan.
He said rail travel in the UK was actually “moderate” in terms of cost compared with other countries, but the system was one of the most complicated.
“There needs to be simplification, rail fares need to be frozen and rail travel needs to be encouraged more,” he said.
He added that simplifying pricing structures and changes to how fares are regulated should put an end to “horror stories” like Kemp’s.
“Hopefully we will see fewer such incidents in the future,” he said.
“We should be cautiously optimistic that that will happen.”